Interplay of the disorder and strain in gallium oxide

TL;DR

This study investigates how disorder and strain interact in gallium oxide under ion irradiation, revealing that disorder accumulates superlinearly and can be engineered to control strain, impacting material phase stability.

Contribution

It demonstrates the superlinear accumulation of disorder and the tunability of strain in Ga2O3 through ion irradiation, providing insights into radiation effects and phase transition control.

Findings

Disorder accumulation is superlinear with collision cascade density.

Strain levels can be engineered by adjusting disorder conditions.

Interplay of disorder and strain affects phase stability in Ga2O3.

Abstract

Ion irradiation is a powerful tool to tune properties of semiconductors and, in particular, of gallium oxide (Ga2O3) which is a promising ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor exhibiting phase instability for high enough strain/disorder levels. In the present paper we observed an interesting interplay between the disorder and strain in monoclinic \b{eta}-Ga2O3 single crystals by comparing atomic and cluster ion irradiations as well as atomic ions co-implants. The results obtained by a combination of the channeling technique, x-ray diffraction and theoretical calculations show that the disorder accumulation in \b{eta}-Ga2O3 exhibits superlinear behavior as a function of the collision cascade density. Moreover, the level of strain in the implanted region can be engineered by changing the disorder conditions in the near surface layer. The results can be used for better understanding of the radiation effects in \b{eta}-Ga2O3 and imply that disorder/strain interplay provides an additional degree of freedom to maintain desirable strain in Ga2O3, potentially applicable to modify the rate of the polymorphic transitions in this material.